I went into the season 3 premier with a lot of reservations. Chief amongst them was that the Crystal Empire wouldn't amount to much beyond the obvious toy sale pitch.

Watching the teasers didn't help. When Celestia explained the Empire's power, the first question that popped into my head was why Equestria would need such a thing. Just send Pinkie Pie on a country-wide tour. You'd go deaf from all the parties!

But I watched the premier and enjoyed it. While not my favorite episodes, they were well done and I enjoyed the world building. And after some reflection I answered my own question while establishing a bit of headcanon and the premise for this comic.

This will likely be my last comic of 2012. Which isn't saying much since 2013 is only a week and a half away. Still, I'll think back on this year as when I entered the MLP community as a comic artist and was overwhelmed by the support and encouragement of the fan base. Thanks for everything and happy holidays!

Update Dang, those folks at Equestria Daily work fast. I was going to submit this when I got home, but I find I've been featured with several fun comics. (I'm hoping I'm one of the two comics that made Sethisto laugh aloud).

Thank you to all the folks who posted comments and added this to their favorites and collections. It's a real treat!

The comic itself if well-drawn and hilarious, but the extra touches like the shadow of Discord and the sunglasses and ESPECIALLY the light shining through Queen Chrysalis' legs are what really make this comic work for me.

I definitely do have to give credit to a dark, absurd comic when I see one! Nice job, mate!

Now having looked over some of the comments below, well… this is in response to one of your older comments in your replies with CommanderEX:

"Let me preface this by stating that I don't think the ponies in the show would ever do something like this. Part of the humor is based on absurdity.

But I do want to point out that the Changelings started the aggression with abduction, impersonation, and brainwashing. They then attempted to conquer the entire kingdom. And if we consider IDW comic book to be canon, then we get to see just what the Changelings do to a love-filled race, which is surprisingly dark. So I can't feel any sympathy to a species that seems to possess a bottomless hunger and never gives anything. I don't think they'd ever agree to a compromise without trying to drain Equestria dry of all positive emotions.

…Unfortunately, the show has only shown the Changeling horde as villains. I might have thought them less evil if they didn't seem to be enjoying terrorizing ponies during the invasion. Too many smiles. As for the Changeling who honored Pinkie... well, it's Pinkie Pie. I don't anything could say no to that enthusiasm!

My hope is that we learn that they were a more peaceful race, but something corrupted them and forced them to feed on love. But for now I can't give a show of sympathy until we see if there's more to them."

Well, I honestly think the main problem with the fandom and Chrysalis and the changelings is that so many of us have become SO hung up on the idea of them being misunderstood, innocent woobies that they cannot see as anything but. Devout changeling fanboys end up one: simply excusing/handwaving anything bad the changelings do, and two: get outraged if anyone dares do anything to ‘hurt’ their ‘poor, pwecious changelings’, even when it’s clearly done in an absurd, dark joke that’s not meant to be taken seriously. I myself am quite the changeling fanboy, but understand when a joke is a joke (I especially do love dark, absurdest humor) and I honestly do agree changelings are not the blameless innocents apologists paint them as.

It’s actually a good thing you mentioned the IDW comics, because it’s funny how some fans whine about ‘Changeling genocide’, yet that’s exactly what Chrysalis’ Army did to an ENTIRE RACE! It’s pretty much like if the changelings do it it’s perfectly excusable, but if anybody even thinks of doing something remotely similar back to them, “Shaaame!” Talk about double-standards.

Now yeah, I would personally love for changelings who are guys to be shown in the show or comics, but can understand that the chances of that actually happening aren’t that great. The sad thing is, the writers clearly designed and portrayed them so far to be seen as the faceless horde of Always Chaotic Evil mooks who we’re not expected to sympathize with. And Chrysalis is certainly not meant to be seen as this martyring crybaby bewailing “I just wanted to feed my people! Feel sorry for MEEE!”, but rather a ruthless, blood-thirsty, battle-hardened Amazon-like Warrior Queen bent on conquest. I’m starting to think a lot of fans love the changelings more for what they want them to be rather than what they are.

They’re just simply not meant to be the Fire Nation or the Klingons, however much I’d love them to. And all we’ve currently got in hopes of that are the countless apologist fics that reduce them to victimized, self-loathing woobies, whilst simultaneously demonizing pony-kind as their “evil, fascist oppressors, especially Celestia!’

Is Chrysalis evil? YES SHE'S EVIL! I just think it's bad writing to have every single changeling alive evil.

A tumblr webcomic I like (I will NOT say which one, nor will I answer if asked), had Celestia sentence all changelings to be found in Equestria to life in the dungeon without trial. That is NOT Celestia!!!!!!

Yeah, well, you know what that tumblr is an example of? Bad Writing and Emotional Manipulation. Look, as Starman Ghost (writer of Of Body and Mind) said in a conversation with me, "people want to write the changelings more sympathetically than "that race that's always evil," but they can't reconcile that with them attacking Equestria, so they go the opposite route and make Equestria the bad guys.

You can admit the changelings did a bad thing without leaping to "they're all evil and must die." It's kind of a central theme of the show.

It's the cheap easy route of making Equestria the bad guys, because it doesn't require a lot of thought and is surprisingly unbelievably easy (it's especially unbelievably easy to make Shining Armor a villain in any fanfic about changelings). They justify the invasion and make Celestia and the rest of Equestria look absolutely horrible by turning them all into Xenophobic dicks so that you as the reader are left with pretty much no choice but to side with the changelings.

Personally? I like what one fan put forth.Chrysalis and her invading army were just that: an army.

It's kinda outdated to have every single member of a race being completely identical in personalty. Trust me, Ive seen a fanfic series like that, did exactly that with another species and it got boring and shallow.

And the fact Chrysalis in the comics calls it 'her colony' suggests that there are other changeling queens out there. It's rather wrong to suggest they're ALL like that. Or that ALL her children are like that.

Yeah, that's a good interpretation I like too. For all we know, there are civilian changelings who had nothing to do with it: fillies/colts, families, etc.

And I agree with you, 100%, but from the looks of it, the writers invented the changelings just to serve as the villains of the special and mook army for the Mane Six to defeat. It doesn't seem they were conceived by the writers with the purpose for much else. If they do have plans to develop them, great, if not, fair enough.

Eh, I didn't read too much into that, though it is possible. Though once again, I'm gonna be pretty hard-assed about the whole "her children" thing. My basic position remains the same: they are never once referred to as her children, but her 'minions'. Until it is stated officially otherwise, I'm gonna keep disagreeing with it.

WARNING! Carry on reading! Or you will die, even if you only looked at the word warning!Once there was a little girl called Clarissa, she was ten-years-old and she lived in a mentalhospital, because she killed her mom and her dad. She got so bad she went to kill all thestaff in the hospital so the More-government decided that best idea was to get rid of her sothey set up a special room to kill her, as humane as possible but it went wrong themachine they were using went wrong. And she sat there in agony for hours until she died.Now every week on the day of her death she returns to the person that reads this letter, ona Monday night at 12:00 a.m. She creeps into your room and kills you slowly, by cutting youand watching you bleed to death. Now send this to ten other pictures on this one site, andshe will haunt someone else who doesn't. This isn't fake. apparently, if you copy and pastethis to ten comments in the next ten minutes you will have the best day of your life tomorrow.Youwill either get kissed or asked out, if you break this chain u will see a little dead girl in your room